20th Century Fox via Everett Collection
50 years ago today -- March 2, 1965 -- The Sound of Music hit theaters in the United States. In honor of the iconic film's anniversary, we take a look behind the scenes of one of our favorite movies to share some things you may not have known.
1. While singing "I Have Confidence," Julie Andrews accidentally tripped in the Von Trapp courtyard.
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Director Robert Wise felt it added a much needed nervousness to the song and the character, so he decided to use it in the film.
2. Julie Andrews sang "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to the Von Trapp children between filming.
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Since Mary Poppins hadn't been released yet, the kids all thought she made it up just for them.
3. Maria never uses the Captain's first name, Georg.
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She calls him only Captain, Sir, or Darling.
4. Christopher Plummer traveled to the Salzburg mountains to meet Captain's nephew and learn more about the character.
Since very little information was available about Captain Von Trapp for Plummer, he and his interpreter met with Captain's nephew to learn a bit about him. The nephew described the real man as the most boring man he'd ever met.
5. The day after the von Trapp family escaped Austria, Hitler ordered the borders shut.
6. They also took a train station to Italy and safety; they didn't hike over a mountain.
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Salzburg is much closer to Austria's border with Germany, and neither Italy nor Switzerland are within walking distance.
7. If they had hiked over a mountain, they'd find themselves near Hitler's mountain retreat in Germany.
8. Charmian Carr (Liesl) has admitted she was attracted to Christopher Plummer, who played her father.
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Despite the 13 year age difference, Plummer admits that the feeling was mutual. He insists it never evolved beyond flirtation.
9. Director Robert Wise didn't get along with the real Maria von Trapp when she came to the set.
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He called her "bossy."
10. In the original play, ideological differences drive the Captain and the Baroness apart.
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She wouldn't stand up to the Nazis, and he refused to compromise with them.
11. Grace Kelly had been considered for the part of the Baroness, but was a bit too busy, you know, being a princess.
12. The gazebo scene with Maria and the Captain was made a silhouette to hide the uncontrollable laughter of Julie Andrews.
20th Century Fox via Everett Collection
According to Andrews, a lighting device kept making a certain "raspberry" noise every time she leaned in to kiss Plummer. After more than 20 takes, the scene was changed to a silhouette to make her laughter less noticeable.
13. The real Von Trapp children weren't pleased with how stern their father was portrayed.
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Maria Von Trapp had asked Wise to soften the character a bit, but the director refused.
14. Kurt's high note in "So Long, Farewell" is actually sung by Liesl's real life younger sister.
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The note was out of Duane Chase's range, so Charmian Carr's sister, Darlene, sang it instead.
15. Mia Farrow auditioned for the role of Liesl.
Liza Minnelli and Sharon Tate were also among those who tested for the part.
16. Christopher Plummer admits he was drunk when they filmed the music festival sequence.
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17. The movie is one of only four films to win both the Tony Award for Best Musical/Play and the Oscar for Best Picture.
The others are My Fair Lady, A Man For All Seasons, and Amadeus.
18. Charmian Carr (Liesl) danced through "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" on an injured ankle.
During the first take of this scene, Carr slipped while leaping from a bench and fell through glass. She wasn't badly hurt, but her ankle was injured and needed to be wrapped for the scene.
19. Even though nobody had seen how she would perform on screen yet, Julie Andrews was always director Robert Wise's first choice.
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20. Yet she almost turned down the part, fearing it was too similar to Mary Poppins.
21. The actress who played Marta, Debbie Turner, kept losing teeth during filming.
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They had to be replaced with false teeth.
22. The children kept growing during filming, so lots of heel lifts and camera tricks were needed for height continuity.
Louisa (Heather Menzies-Urich) started production three inches taller than Friedrich (Nicholas Hammond); he had to wear lifts. By the end of filming, he'd grown six inches. Liesl (Charmian Carr) had to stand on a box while Friedrich didn't wear shoes to help keep their heights consistent.
23. Nicholas Hammond had to endure a bunch of painful bleachings to turn brown hair blond for the film.
24. Christopher Plummer disliked filming so very much that he referred to the movie as "The Sound of Mucus."
25. Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Veronica Cartwright were among those who auditioned for roles as von Trapp children.
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As did the four oldest Osmond brothers: Alan, Jay, Merrill, and Wayne.
26. The gazebo's interior scenes were shot in Los Angeles.
The inside of the actual gazebo was too small to accommodate the dance numbers.
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27. The gazebo can still be seen in Salzburg, but only from the outside.
Visitors were too frequently attempting to dance along the benches and injuring themselves, so the interior is now off limits.
28. Julie Andrews learned to play guitar specifically for this role.
29. Christopher Plummer also learned to play guitar for the role...but his playing was dubbed.
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30. Christopher Plummer asked for "Edelweiss" to be replaced.
He thought the song was trite and "schmaltzy" and asked for it to be written out. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman refused.
31. There was nobody at the altar to officiate the wedding during filming because someone forgot to wake the actor.
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32. Julie Andrews has also claimed that the actual bishop of Salzburg can be spotted in the wedding scene.
33. It's not really Kym Karath (Gretl) on Captain's shoulders in the final shot as they climb the mountains to safety.
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Karath had gained a bit of weight while filming in Austria, and evidently Christopher Plummer found her too heavy to carry on his back. He requested a stunt double.
34. Which is funny, since Plummer's weight gain required his costumes to be refitted for his extra mass.
He admitted he ate and drank in Austria in order to better cope with the unhappiness he felt from filming.
35. The movie features a rare onscreen performance by famed ghost singer Marni Nixon.
She played Sister Sophia. Nixon, who had previously done the vocals for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Since Julie Andrews played Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway version but was passed over in favor of Hepburn for the film, producers were nervous to learn how she would react to Nixon's casting. Andrews approached her and exclaimed, "Marni, I'm a fan of you!"
36. Christopher Plummer has said working with Julie Andrews is like "being hit over the head with a big Valentine's Day card."
37. Julie Andrews kept getting knocked over from the helicopter's wind.
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Though that iconic spin looks warm and sunny, Andrews only remembers how cold she was as she repeatedly ran across the mountain with the ferocious winds of the chopper above. She tried digging her feet into the ground without luck.
38. Director Robert Wise climbed a nearby tree in order to film that first musical number; he wanted to be able to watch the helicopter filming without getting in the shot himself.
39. Sean Connery and Richard Burton were both considered to play Captain.
40. The real Maria von Trapp makes a cameo.
In the "I Have Confidence" scene, as Julie Andrews walks beneath a brick archway, the real Maria can be seen behind her, dressed as a peasant.
41. Heinrich Himmler, famed Nazi, took over the von Trapp house after they escaped. Adolf Hitler visited him there more than once.
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42. Kym Karath (Gretl) couldn't swim, so Julie Andrews was responsible for catching her when they fall out of the boat and into the water.
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On the second take, the boat tipped in a way that sent Andrews flying one way and Karath falling out the other side. Heather Menzies-Urich (Louisa) was tasked with saving her instead, which Andrews was haunted by.
43. Subsequently, Karath threw up all over Menzies-Urich after swallowing too much water.
44. The cast had to be continually hosed down in order to maintain a soaking wet look after falling into the water.
45. Liesl may have been 16 going on 17, but she was actually older than Rolfe.
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Charmian Carr was 22 at the time she sang that song; Daniel Truhitte, who played Rolfe, is ten months younger than she is. Now who's older and wiser?
46. Shirley Jones, Anne Bancroft, and Doris Day were all considered for the part of Maria.
47. Robert Wise initially turned down the opportunity to direct the picture.
Stanley Donen, Vincent Donohue, Gene Kelly, and George Roy Hill were also approached and said no.
48. Mary Martin, wife of the producer of the original Broadway show and the first woman to play Maria made nearly $8,000,000 from the film.
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While Julie Andrews earned just $225,000.
49. According to British tabloid The Sun, it's one of the films chosen to show after a nuclear strike to improve morale.
Though this is unconfirmed by the BBC who declared it a security issue.
50. Peggy Wood (Mother Abbess) had a hard time lip-syncing along to "Climb Ev'ry Mountain."
She struggled to perfectly match the first word of the song, so director Robert Wise had her face away from camera when she began singing. When she looked at camera, she had caught up with the song enough to perfectly pass. The effect of her staring out the window in the beginning added a mystical element to the song and fit in better than originally planned.

Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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All Jackie Chan movies are basically the same right? Jackie is the good
guy who's on the run from or in pursuit of a truly evil bad guy. In
this one Jackie plays an Imperial Chinese guard sent to the American
west during the 1800s to rescue a kidnapped princess (Lucy Liu). He
buddies up with a bumbling outlaw (Owen Wilson) and as you might guess
action and laughs follow.
One reason for Chan's phenomenal success of recent years is that he
seems to realize his own strengths and weaknesses as an actor and plays
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Well there's some nice scenery of the Sierra Nevadas and the old west
(where this stuff was actually filmed I have no idea but it looks
great) but other than that this film is a showcase for the actors. For
the most part director Tom Dey doesn't deviate from the tried-and-true
elements of a Hollywood western: Gunfights Indians brothels bounty
hunters barroom brawls hangings damsels in distress and so on. The
final fight between the good guys and bad guys is a lot of fun mixing
up swordplay gunplay martial arts and fighting sticks.